


Flirting With The Asphalt

by Fabellion



Category: Homestuck
Genre: ? - Freeform, Angst, Angst and Feels, Character Study, Depressed John Egbert, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Introspection, John Egbert Angst, Near Death Experiences, Projection, Self-Indulgent, Self-Worth Issues, Suicidal Ideation, i guess that counts, self-projection, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:13:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29207913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fabellion/pseuds/Fabellion
Summary: John is sick. The only one he's told is the universe.The universe likes to gamble.It's a good thing, then, if for a second, that John does too.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Kudos: 9





	Flirting With The Asphalt

**Author's Note:**

> WooOo boy so long story short, I've been working on this fic on-and-off since late 2019 and only now got around to finishing and posting it !! As implied by the tags, it initially started as a vent fic since John is a character I tend to find comfort in but grew to be a little more than that by the time I was done with it.
> 
> I'll be the first to say that the emotions portrayed here might be slightly dramatized since I myself hadn't been doing so well when I first started writing it, so my apologies if that happens to be the case! I promise I am not attempting to make light of depression or mental illness in any capacity. 
> 
> Please let me know if any other tags need to be added!

His name is John Egbert and he’s never been so high in his entire life.

Well, literally speaking; from where he was suspended in midair between the Earth and the atmosphere, he could see just about _everything_ spread out below him. From the white suburbs dotting the countryside to the rolling hills beyond them, from the monochrome patchwork of the Carapacian Kingdom to that of the trolls’ not ten miles away; all of it was visible and every last inch was a marvel to behold.

All of it was connected in some way or another, too, he notes absently, this world that they’d all created. No matter how linear some kingdoms pretended their borders to be, they always overlapped here and there. Through roadways and waterways and railways and _all the ways,_ honestly, things were not so black and white as to isolate a single area to any which place. 

“That’s what makes it so free, I guess,” he mutters to himself. He was hardly aware that he’d even spoken. 

Free, yeah. He and his friends had created this place, after all, this entire new world surrounding him so wholly and completely that it almost didn’t feel like it was real. Melded by their hands, why wouldn’t it be free? Or connected, for that matter.

Actually, he could almost liken the land below to his friends themselves if he thought about it long enough. They were all entangled in each other’s lives somehow; like how Dave would pester John to check out his freshest raps, or Jade would drag him off to the park when she thought he needed fresh air, or Rose would come visit and they’d chat while she painted his nails. 

John cracks a smile at that last one; he’s still yet to have gotten used to the feel of polish getting stuck on his skin.

But beyond all that, he can’t recall a time where they were ever _NOT_ together. This didn’t always mean that he got to see them in person—Hell, it was only until they’d lived through this blasted game tried and true that he’d properly met them face-to-face—but they’d always been by his side, no matter how viscerally. Ever since the lot of them were stupid 13 year-old kids with too many dreams and expectations, his little band of four has always stayed four.

There was Karkat and the others too, though, of course. John’s wandering gaze flits to the Troll Kingdom and he wonders what they might be up to now. It’s stupid to hope that he’ll spot them, he’s aware, between his coke-bottle glasses and the plummet of distance between them both. That which he _can_ see is but a speck of a blur from up here. 

In some sense, though, he’s almost relieved; thinking of Karkat reminded him as to why he was even up here in the first place. 

Thinking of anyone, actually. It’s a wonder it hadn’t crossed his mind until now.

But he knew that he’d just been distracting himself. He knew and so he hadn’t bothered to acknowledge anything else save for the vastness of this pristine universe—up until this point, John guessed. Why?

Because it was quiet up here, he reasoned. Because it was open and rippling and nothing else existed beyond himself and the clouds, and he was a coward. Because it was _free._

Because his home was so empty and his walls so paper-thin that he couldn’t stand to revel in his own brand of silence anymore. 

Back there, down where his feet touched the Earth, he’d been suffocating. Every gasp of air John took in fed him more of his friends’ worry, and every shaky exhale he spat out left them with innumerable “I’m fine’s." They’d blown up his phone to the point of nonrecognition between any of his contacts, their numbers blurring together in a tangle of words and symbols his brain didn’t want to identify. 

So he’d set it to silent, tossed it on the bed, and flown way up here, where he could finally think without his notifications haunting him. Where he could finally be by himself, if just for a little bit.

He already knew they’d been worried, after all. It wasn’t exactly every day that the second chance you’d been given to know someone as your ‘father’ is suddenly ripped away again without respite, but their constant fretting did little aside from remind him of what he’d lost. 

So John knew that they’d been worried, and he knew they didn’t mean to be cruel. But there was surely no reason for them to be _scared for him,_ as Rose had delicately put it. She made it sound as though he were gonna do something stupid. Which he wasn’t! That’d be, y’know, stupid. 

The single scar marring his wrist begs otherwise. His heart pangs at the reminder, and aches further still when he smooths a thumb across it. The impassive look on his face stays distantly put. 

Yeah, it had only been one, and it had been so, so _stupid._ He’d been drunk with numb curiosity and apathy, flooding a hollow in his chest so deep that he could barely breathe, followed by the glint of cold steel, and—

—and a flashing, pinched sort of pain, and with the first beads of blood welling up from John’s wrist he had set down the blade plundered from a pencil sharpener and violently shook until the world dripped away. 

That’s all he would let himself remember when he woke up the next morning. 

His friends didn’t need to know. They all were _connected,_ after all, so wouldn’t admission of what he’d done only earn their outrage? So John had told Rose when she pressed him that he knew he could tell her, or the rest of them, anything at all, and that’d been the end of that. Temporarily, anyway, if John’s current day has been anything to go by. 

Still, that’s why he came up here, isn’t it? It’s been weeks since that day; nobody said he had to think about it, least of all himself. He could ponder something else. Anything else. 

From where he drifts, he can see that directly below him is the consorts’ kingdom— _his_ kingdom, if the placement of his family’s house was anything to go by.

His. Only _his_ house, John corrects himself, and he flips upside down like that’ll stop the acid from rising in his throat. Like if he gazes down at the world from some new angle, then everything will just make itself right again.

He does little but make himself dizzy, of course, but at least it gives him an excuse to close his eyes. So he does, and begrudgingly lets his thoughts take back over. 

He regrets it almost immediately, as the first thing his mind supplies him is with memories of his father. Of him smoking, of his pressed shirts, of the sickening saccharine scent left behind by his baking. Of his car when John had found it in LOWAS. Of his ink-blotted hats. Of his blood still red and sticky when Jack had spattered it over the floor. Of his _Dad._

Of the awful, gaping reminder that these fucking memories are all he has left.

It didn’t have to be like this. It _**never**_ had to be like this—but thirteen-year-olds are dumb. They’re ignorant, and they’re hopeful, and they can’t differentiate a rush of excitement from that of pure, unadulterated _horror_ until almost every important thing has been stripped from their lives in one harrowing, candy-coated slash of obsidian.

It’s his fault. It’s all of their faults, really, but especially his. He was the one who’d pressed the ‘play’ button first. He’d been the one to hound everyone until they’d eventually told him they’d got it. Jade might have found the game, but he was the first to back her up. 

He was the ringleader. Up until they all won, he had _always_ been the ringleader. 

From all around him, the wind had begun shifting in a way he didn’t recognize. Then again, it could just be all the blood still pooling in his head from where he’s floating upside down. Though, can it really be called floating anymore if the world starts feeling more _down_ than _up?_

He guesses it doesn’t matter, because his eyes are still closed and his heart is still aching. Every inch of him tingles with the gradual lack of atmosphere, and his nerves fire along with each sick bolt of undiluted _loathing_ careening through his chest. Wave after nauseating, baleful wave of agony sears his gut from the inside out, and for a moment all he can feel is sorrow. 

A sorrow so deep, so desolate, that it leaves him hollow and wanting to scream to the heavens until his throat splits in two.

He shouldn’t have survived, should he? Why did he have to create the universe just so almost everyone could die before they got there? What was the _fucking **point?**_ Could anyone tell him? Did anyone know? 

With his body’s own lack of assent, or perhaps subconsciously because of it, John lets himself flutter even further down the horizon. 

But—it didn't have to be that way. Dream bubbles still existed, right? And along with those pockets of memory came everyone else; empty-eyed, perhaps, but still no less the person they once used to be. Meenah was already there, and Vriska was visiting, and his dads might have met up, and _there’s absolutely no way they don’t still exist, right? He could see his dad again, **right?**_

It was his own lack of an answer which made something click, and all at once John could feel _everything._

The breeze howled past his ears like a wake-up call, ricocheted as though he’d just burst from underwater and cranked the volume up past ten. It whipped at his face with a vengeance, and only when the roar of it echoed into white noise did he finally let himself open his eyes.

The backdrop of his universe had narrowed to a grassy pinpoint, and with each new throb of his heartbeat did the realization that he was dropping headlong into a freefall truly beat itself in.

Earth raced ever closer, blurrier, and past the desperation clawing itself up his throat as his body tensed to scream—

—he was enveloped in a calm so numbing that the idea suddenly didn’t bother him at all.

His body still stung with the harsh coldness of the air, but half of him was simply lulled to relax within its embrace and just let himself—

Die.

John’s pulse seemed to echo.

But then what had been the point of living, then? Because...

_I survived... didn’t I?_

It wouldn’t be fair. What would it mean if he did all this for nothing? Who would be left to mourn if he let it be for nothing?

If the afterlife does exist, how was he supposed to apologize when he met those who couldn’t make it as far as he did? 

Inside, his chest feels like it has burst. He can just see the edges of the treetops, now, tumbling around in his vision, and the recognition of what the fuck he thinks he’s doing slams into him with all the backlash of a freight train. Back was his desperation, tearing up his insides with ravenous frenzy and crying out in a voice that leaves his frosty lungs ablaze. 

Here, in the moment between ceasing to exist and living just because he has to, did John truly ever feel afraid. 

John doesn’t know when he lets it happen; his shoulder screams as it’s flung out abruptly, and with an animal yell of pure distraught reverberating in his ears the breeze rushes up all around him.

Then it strikes him in the chest, cracking against his core so soundly that for one starry-eyed and empty-lunged moment John prays he hadn’t gotten his wish. His mouth gapes open in a gasp, but no sound escapes. 

But then he’s rippling back upward, dizzy with the feel of it, clutching his fists so tightly he thinks all of his knuckles have popped—and then he’s floating, suspended back within the air, the still of sunset suddenly so quiet that it’s the most jarring thing he’s never heard. 

He’s still alive.

The thing which breaks that is... laughter. It’s a wretched sound, punched from his chest first in spasms, a jittery afterimage to the heaving gobs of mirth now bellowing from his lungs in shattering wails.

_He’s still alive._

Thunder rattles his ribcage and torrents cascade down his cheeks as he crumbles into the most pitiful one-man hurricane the world has ever seen—and spirals.

And the world, sick and seething, spirals with him. 

His name is John Egbert and he’s never been so forlorn to fly in his entire life.

**Author's Note:**

> Personally think that the ending doesn't have as much of an impact as it could've, but I guess that's alright.
> 
> As far as I'm currently aware all the typos and notes have been edited out, but if any still remain please inform me!


End file.
